EPA pressures ethanol refineries to clean up their reporting.

Refiners, blenders and importers of renewable fuels trying to beat—or in some cases, merely figure out—the system could soon face fines of up to $32,000 a day.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is cracking down on violators of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) who are not properly reporting whether they meet the renewable volume obligations set by the law under the Energy Act of 2005.

Starting in September 2007, companies were required to begin using 38-digit renewable identification numbers (RINs) to identify and track each gallon of biofuel produced in the United States. But 10 months into the program, many companies still don’t have adequate reporting systems–and the EPA is taking notice.  

“All signs show it is getting worse and worse,” says Clayton McMartin, president of RINSTAR Renewable Fuel Registry, a New Mexico-based clearinghouse for RINs.

Eighty-one percent of companies surveyed by RINSTAR in January failed to meet the EPA’s requirement of reporting RIN data in a timely manner, a 39 percent increase from an October survey, according to McMartin.

The EPA this summer issued a document addressing three of the most commonly occurring RIN reporting errors, both as a means to offer guidance and to set a serious tone to violators. Some fuel companies are using services such as RINSTAR to report RINs to the EPA. The more common practice has been to adapt existing accounting practices to meet RIN reporting requirements.